The development of coherent and effective relations with other regions and countries is one of the most challenging tasks faced by the European Union. This original volume explores the EU's engagement with the global South, focusing on three controversial policy areas: economic cooperation, development cooperation, and conflict management. A discussion of the EU's interregional model - which promotes interaction with regions rather than nation-states - provides a backdrop for case studies of EU policies with regard to Africa, Asia, and Latin America. While disclosing the tensions and overlaps between the EU's foreign policies and those of its member states, the authors also highlight an increasing trend toward successful policy coordination.

This accessible new textbook situates the European Union in a dramatically changed world order. Resisting a more traditional and abstract introduction to the institutions, structures and policy making processes of the EU, this innovative new text cuts through the jargon to demonstrate how hard the EU must work to retain its international influence. Taking into account the latest empirical developments, including the spread of war and violence in the East with Ukraine and the ongoing turbulent politics of North Africa and the Middle East, Richard Youngs – an expert in the field – introduces us to how the EU has been forced to act differently. The book is unique in offering an outside-in conceptual framework that inverts the way that the EU external action is studied and understood. It unpacks the different international challenges the EU has faced in recent years, including the weakening of global order, the need for more protective security, geo-economic competition, climate change and conflicts to its east and south. In each case the book examines how the EU has responded and how its core international identity has changed as a result, assessing whether the Union still retains strong global influence. This book is the ideal companion for students taking modules on the European Union's foreign policy, global politics, and for students of European Union Politics more broadly at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

This book provides a broad and in-depth introduction to the geopolitical, economic and trade changes wrought with the increasing influence of the countries of the Global South in international affairs. Since the introduction of the United Nations General Assembly's New International Economic Order, the countries of the Global South, particularly China, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Qatar, made an indelible impact upon the world's economic architecture.

Examines how the EU is perceived in the US; the Middle East; Russia; China; India; Brazil; South Africa; the World Bank; WTO; UN; Al Jazeera and International NGOs and explores the impact of these perceptions for the global role of the EU.

Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Bringing together a range of experts across various sectors, this important volume explores some of the key issues that have arisen in the Global South with the COVID-19 pandemic. Situating the worldwide health crisis within broader processes of globalisation, the book investigates implications for development and gender, as well as the effects on migration, climate change and economic inequality. Contributors consider how widespread and long-lasting responses to the pandemic should be, while paying particular attention to the accentuated risks faced by vulnerable populations. Providing answers that will be essential to development practitioners and policy makers, the book offers vital insights into how the impact of COVID-19 can be mitigated in some of the most challenging socio-economic contexts worldwide.

Is the European Union a unified actor in world politics? The world’s leading economic power is still struggling to find its role in shaping and maintaining global peace, free trade and commerce. How successful is the EU ́s Common Foreign and Security Policy and its institutions really?

The European Union has been one of the most vocal advocates of 'sustainable development', particularly in its dealings with developing countries. Even prior to the formulation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the EU has insisted upon the need for sustainable approaches to poverty reduction and economic growth in the Global South. When examining EU relations with African countries as part of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group, however, it becomes clear that the translation of Europe's sustainability discourse into practice is highly problematic. Notably, there are concerns that the EU's free market approach to development - embodied in its EPA trade deals - is incompatible with genuine, pro-poor forms of sustainable growth. Moreover, the EU is often seen as a hegemonic actor whose trade and aid interventions in Africa often do more to perpetuate poverty than to ameliorate it. This book casts a critical light on Africa-EU relations with regards to the EU's sustainability pledges. It does this through looking at an array of issues - not least trade, aid, the environment, and democratic institutions. In this vein, the book poses a challenge to EU trade and development discourse in the era of the UN SDGs. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue in Third World Thematics: A TWQ Journal.

This book explores regionalism in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and highlights the influence of the European Union (EU) as an extra-regional actor on the organization and integration process. The analysis is guided by theory and explains the emergence, institutional design and performance of SADC’s major integration projects in the issue areas of the economy, security and infrastructure. It provides in this way a profound assessment of the organization as a whole. The study shows that South Africa plays a regional key role as driver for integration while external influence of the EU is ambivalent in character because it unfolds a supportive or obstructive impact. The author argues that the EU gains influence over regional integration processes in the SADC on the basis of patterns of asymmetric interdependence and becomes a ‘game-changer’ insofar as it facilitates or impedes solutions to regional cooperation problems.

This book explores the EU’s effectiveness as an international mediator and provides a comparative analysis of EU mediation through three case studies: the conflict over Montenegro’s independence, the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia, and the Geneva International Discussions on South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The book starts from the observation that the EU has emerged as an important international provider of mediation in various conflicts around the world. Against this background, the author develops an analytical framework to investigate EU mediation effectiveness that is then applied to the three cases. The main finding of the book is that EU mediation has a stabilising effect on conflict dynamics, making renewed escalation less likely and contributing to the settlement of conflict issues. At the same time, the EU’s effectiveness depends primarily on its ability to influence the conflict parties’ willingness to compromise through conditionality and diplomatic pressure.

This book introduces a new approach to understanding security in the Mediterranean and explores current challenges at the European Union (EU) Mediterranean borders. It investigates the intertwined area at the South of the EU that we call the Mediterranean Global South where common actions and strategies are required to face common security challenges. The book critically addresses the EU's capacity to manage its expanding borders and analyses the actors involved in providing security in the Mediterranean Global South. Specific attention is devoted to South to North migration, one of the most critical security issues of current times, deploying its effects well beyond states borders. Stefania Panebianco is Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Catania and Visiting Professor at LUISS-Rome. She holds Jean Monnet Chair EUMedEA (EU Mediterranean Border Crises and European External Action).